May 20, 2011

I don't really get the point of Twitter. I prefer Pull to Push in media consumption, but the world cycles back and forth between those two poles.

So, I am now in the business of pushing tweets out to whomever wants them. Be aware, I'm not going to create any original content for Twitter. Trying to limit myself to 140 characters seems extraordinarily unfeasible. The whole point of blogging, as far as I'm concerned, is that the length is indefinite. I start writing about something and then I find out where the topic leads me.

So, I'm just going to automatically tweet out the headlines of my iSteve blog posts and you can click on them to go read my blog items.

Yeah, I know it doesn't sound terribly exciting. But, if you are in to Twitter, you can sign up to follow me at:

Conversely, you can tweet my blogposts to your followers. See the five gray "Share Buttons" below this blog post. Just put your cursor over the middle one, and watch the "t" turn Twitter aqua or whatever the corporate color is. Click on it to tweet this post (although, I assume, this would be a pretty lame post to tweet. Or maybe not -- as I may have mentioned, I don't really get Twitter, so don't ask me.)

24 comments:

I just started tweeting, and FWIW, it has increased traffic to my blogs and I'm sure it'll do the same for you. I'm just sending my links our whenever I post something, three or four times a day. I agree that it's hard to do anything meaningful in that short space other than attract people to something bigger. You can follow me on Twitter HERE.

I agree that RSS is better than Twitter for posting links to long articles, but you can instead cultivate the habit of posting just your shorter insights to Twitter, and subscribing to others who are good at this. (Eg see my faves: @robotwisdom)

There's a lot more people who can be funny in 140 than insightful, though.

I don't really get the point of Twitter, either. To me, it seems either adolescent or senescent, since the young and the old are the two age groups most preoccupied with the minutiae of their lives and tiresomely sure everyone else is just as avidly interested in them, too. Unfortunately, thanks to liberalism, we are all adolescents now.

I already follow you on your blog, faithfully, if not religiously. Frankly, the idea of following a grown man twittering or of me following his tweets unnerves me.

Of course, for you and other bloggers, it's different. Trying to attract traffic to read your thoughts on HBD is not the same as informing everyone of how much you hate your mother's Frito pie or how proud you were of your grandkid's performance in the school play.

I don't really get Twitter either. What's the point? Once in a blue moon I find I can share a short joke or thought or observation. But beyond that, the only thing I use it for is as a way to encounter fun links I wouldn't run into otherwise. Good to see you on Twitter, though. Maybe it'll draw in some fresh readers.

I have yet to understand the appeal of following blogs via Twitter. My working hypothesis is that people who do this don't know about RSS or think that it's complicated. But is Google Reader actually any harder to use than the terrible, terrible Twitter interface?

Almost all the feeds I follow are either full text or have at least 150-word excerpts so I can tell whether something is worth reading. I've never been able to follow the title-only feeds on RSS; I just lose interest.

When I follow someone's link to an interesting blog post and I get to the end and read "If you liked this, follow me on Twitter!", it actually puts me off. I must have mistaken you for someone who uses complete sentences! It would be like hearing a nice song on the radio followed by an announcement, "If you liked that song, you can listen to our armpit farts over the telephone!"

Great stuff Steve. Welcome aboard. It will make it easier to "re-tweet" (RT) your work to my followers now.

One other note: Please pick an appropriate avatar. Perhaps a photo of the '98 Accord would be sufficient reminder to your followers that donations are always appreciated. (Plus, I have set up a peri-mutuel pool on what color it is. Leading the way is Brown at 5-2.)

The advantage of twitter is you can get the headlines from, say, a 100 or 1000 sources in a convenient and efficient way, and then pick the ones you wanna read. Otherwise, you'll have to go to each different news site and blog to see what's up.

For example, if you're twittered onto Sailer, you can check your twitter page or cellphone and see if he--and many others posted--something you might want to read. You don't have to go to his blog(and a bunch of other sites)to check it out.

For example, if I'm twittered onto Sailer, Yglesias, BBC News, NY Times, TNR, National Geo, etc, etc, all I have to do is check my twitter-messages to see who posted something that might interest me.

Also, if you're twittered, you get alerts when new stuff has been posted. You don't have to go to different sites to see if new stuff has been posted.

But personally, twitter isn't for me cuz when I'm away from my computer, I wanna be left alone in peace and not be beep beeped all the time. I'm old school. When I go nature-traveling, the rule is no tech gear.

LA times article on the origin of the 160 character limit (twitter reserves 20 characters for names, leaving you with only 140)

http://tinyurl.com/cjwh7x

like tim berners-lee, this german guy gets nothing for developing something used by more than a billion people every day. there are no nobel prizes or royalties for most daily use tech, but it's all critical stuff just the same. not even sure how royalties would work for those guys. one cent royalty per use? they would be the first hundred billionaires.

we did use to hypothesize that charging one cent per address per email, to send an email, would shut down spam permanently, without doing much harm to the convenience of properly using email. you could still send 15 emails a day for 15 cents, but a spammer can't send 1 million emails per day for $10000 per day, every single day. that ruins their business model.

Jeff, In Australia, no one knows that Steve is supposed to be a racist RWDB.. I just innocently refer to him as a bloke called Steve who reviews books, moves and blogs about 'stuff'' hee hee. Don't get too famous Steve then all my Labour ( that's Democrats for you Yanks) mates will stop listening when I drop Stevisms into the conversation. Mt Isa Miner

Great stuff Steve. Welcome aboard. It will make it easier to "re-tweet" (RT) your work to my followers now

"My followers", geez. Sounds like he's running a cult out in the desert.

My working hypothesis is that people who do this don't know about RSS...

Ha ha, I wouldn't have believed you had I not read this:The advantage of twitter is you can get the headlines from, say, a 100 or 1000 sources,.. Otherwise, you'll have to go to each different news site and blog to see what's up

Twitter is primarily designed to match the needs of a cellphone/phone-like gadget crazed gen Y and Millenial which, between growing up under the ever-faster paced tv programming, internet, and ever smaller cell phone, has an attention span of only a couple of sentences. I would assume it has more appeal for teen girls than other demographics since they are more into the mindless details of each other.

Here's the Google Wallet FAQ. From it: "You will need to have (or sign up for) Google Wallet to send or receive money. If you have ever purchased anything on Google Play, then you most likely already have a Google Wallet. If you do not yet have a Google Wallet, don’t worry, the process is simple: go to wallet.google.com and follow the steps." You probably already have a Google ID and password, which Google Wallet uses, so signing up Wallet is pretty painless.

You can put money into your Google Wallet Balance from your bank account and send it with no service fee.

Google Wallet works from both a website and a smartphone app (Android and iPhone -- the Google Wallet app is currently available only in the U.S., but the Google Wallet website can be used in 160 countries).

Or, once you sign up with Google Wallet, you can simply send money via credit card, bank transfer, or Wallet Balance as an attachment from Google's free Gmail email service. Here'show to do it.

(Non-tax deductible.)

Fourth: if you have a Wells Fargo bank account, you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Wells Fargo SurePay. Just tell WF SurePay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). (Non-tax deductible.)

Fifth: if you have a Chase bank account (or, theoretically,other bank accounts), you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Chase QuickPay (FAQ). Just tell Chase QuickPay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address (steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). If Chase asks for the name on my account, it's Steven Sailer with an n at the end of Steven. (Non-tax deductible.)

My Book:

"Steve Sailer gives us the real Barack Obama, who turns out to be very, very different - and much more interesting - than the bland healer/uniter image stitched together out of whole cloth this past six years by Obama's packager, David Axelrod. Making heavy use of Obama's own writings, which he admires for their literary artistry, Sailer gives the deepest insights I have yet seen into Obama's lifelong obsession with 'race and inheritance,' and rounds off his brilliant character portrait with speculations on how Obama's personality might play out in the Presidency." - John Derbyshire Author, "Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics" Click on the image above to buy my book, a reader's guide to the new President's autobiography.